Ten Things You Might Not Know About Our World

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Nov 12, 2012, 01:06 ET

WASHINGTON, Nov. 12, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- These facts about our interconnected world were brought to you by Geography Awareness Week 2012. To learn more, visit us at www.GAWeek.org!

The United States imports one-third of the entire world's coffee production.[1] Hawaii and Puerto Rico are the only two places in the U.S. where coffee grows commercially.[2]
The world's largest zipper manufacturer makes 90% of the world's zippers and operates in 71 countries.[3]
Mexico, Canada, Peru and China account for at least 93% of all fresh vegetables imported to the United States year-round.[4] In winter and spring, as much as 60% of the produce is grown specifically in Northern Mexico, where its transport to the U.S. is susceptible to climatic disasters and social or political shifts.[5]
It requires 2,900 gallons of water to make a pair of jeans, 1,799 gallons to produce a pound of beef and 10 gallons to make one slice of bread.[6][7][8] Yet one in seven people in the world lack access to clean water.[9]
Indonesia has the largest Muslim population of any country in the world, with around 205 million Muslims. That's 88% of the country's population and 13% of the world's Muslims.[10]
There are areas in the Atacama Desert in Chile where no rainfall has ever been recorded by humans.[11]
In 1990, a cargo ship going from Los Angeles to Korea dumped almost 80,000 pairs of sneakers into the Pacific Ocean. Ocean currents carried them as far as 2,000 miles to Vancouver Island in Canada.[12]
There are around 850 languages recorded in Papua New Guinea, a country of approximately 6.3 million people. That's more than 10% of all the world's known languages.[13]
Lake Baikal, in the Russian region of Siberia, is 25 million-30 million years old and contains 20% of the entire Earth's unfrozen surface freshwater.[14]
75% of the farms that produce cocoa beans (the main ingredient in chocolate) are in West Africa. Cote d'Ivoire produces more than 30% of the world's cocoa beans. However, Africa accounts for less than 3% of the world's chocolate consumption.[15]